Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture

MAY 2010

Music

Massive Attack makes the kind of music that sounds great when youre alone. Referencing dub reggae, backpack hip-hop, post-punk, rave culture, and R&B without sounding like any of them, it plays on paranoia and longingoften in the same song.

Music

Spirit Duplicator, the second record from Brooklyn quartet the Wingdale Community Singers, begins with an enticing simulacrumnot a chord strummed on an acoustic guitar but the naked skeleton of notes that would seem to form that chord.

Music

Wanting to live in New York and actually doing it are two separate beasts. First theres the tableau: drinking coffee from one of those Greek-motif cups the Law & Order cops are always holding; reading the Post and Observer; riding the subway. But this has little to do with the actualliving part of living in New Yorkthe competition, the paralyzing stress, and a plummeting job market. I havent bought a copy of the Post in two years.

Music

Yeasayers vigorous mix of dance-inspired electronica and indie guitar-rock, presented live at Berlins Postbahnhof on March 10, was much needed in the arctic wastes of a city slowly crawling out of a long, arduous winter.

Music

Martíns production follows the arc of the book, covering Arenass life from childhood in Cuba to exile in New York City. As a youth, Arenas joined Castros rebels and soon moved from the provinces to Havana to pursue writing. But his writings and openly gay lifestyle soon got him into trouble with the Communist regime.